Work Makes You Free
by AFIS
Summary: Real life challenge that had to involve Sara and Catherine in a committed relationship, a conflict of some kind, a popular phrase/idea, and less than 2k words. Subject matter is dark and full of angst.


**A/N** - This is a result of a real life challenge given by one of my girlfriends. She challenged me to write a snippet ff that involved Sara and Cath in a committed relationship, some kind of conflict, and a popular phrase or ideology. I was considering ignoring her challenge as immature, but after reading a fellow author's works (poetif, check her out, she'd appreciate it like all of us writers do) I was inspired to take up the challenge. Have fun reading.

**Disclaimer**: Don't own CSI or Sara or Catherine. But I do own everything else in this so shout if you want to archive this story for your own purposes or continue this in your own fics. Thanks.

**!Warning!** - This story is quite dark in subject tone. No overly graphic displays of sex, but the subject is dark. I don't want to say anymore without giving everything away so, you've been forewarned.

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><p>We loved each other properly, once upon a time. Never had she taken from me without giving back something of herself in return. But something had changed, manifested itself as darkness in her heart. Taking became standard. Stealing was expected. My tears could never fall even as she took pieces of myself that I had thought I had lost many years ago as a child.<p>

Words will never hurt me, words will never hurt me, words will never hurt me.

Repetition is my armor even as she assaulted into me with torrent after torrent after endless torrent of daggers made of words. Bitch, whore, scum, cunt…all too familiar to my ears as she hurled them at me with little abandon. Love had become a synonym for repression, depression, submission. Those words were also too familiar in my daily vocabulary.

This dance of misery was never a daily occurrence. My master was too smart for that. She would give me a couple of weeks off between these cycles of abuse to allow me to heal.

Never had it ever healed fully.

In order for something to heal, there must be something left from the original assault and she made sure the destruction of my sense of self was complete. Seconds upon minutes upon days would pass before she would return in our bedroom with those miserably cold eyes and a Mona Lisa smile.

Her weapons of mass submission gleaned at me as they cocked themselves in preparation. God, I could never forget those evil devices of pain. I cowered in fear as she came closer. She, no, it, winked at me and the childish whimper of submission pinballed recklessly through my exhausted frame. No longer did the screams bubble from my throat as my master began her ritualistic dance in preparation of the assault.

Need. I needed her to take me.

Each lash of her golden whips and chains against my blackened bruised surface of my moistening flesh pushed me deeper, deeper, deeper into utter misery, utter excitement, and utter salvation.

Licks turned into marks, marks turned into scratches, scratches turned into bloodied wounds, bloodied wounds turned into bruises. This was my endless purpose, to mark time and to lose my identity with each passing day under her ruling of my body. There was no hope for my emancipation as I was locked in her concentration camp of brutal repression. Our bedroom had become my own Auschwitz and I was its only prisoner forced to toil away, burning what little energy I had left in endless servitude to her cruel beauty until the inevitable conclusion.

Arbeit macht frei. Work makes you free but at what cost? My master cracked her whip in a deathly rhythm that my body was comforted by, exhilarated by, scared by. I found myself unable to shed the tears that I know she loved to see. I stopped crying many years ago…it felt disingenuous. The only tears I shed now are crimson rivers running over my conflicted flesh.

Blood tastes so sweet when it's your own…

_Stop lying to yourself. You want this pain. You want her to leave but the idea of it makes you physically ill._

My hands tried indecisively to make an attempt to steal back my freedom but the weak revolt was quickly put down after she wrapped my hands to the headboard of the jail. My blood has doused ever part of my makeshift prison. Bleach got rid of the visible stains but they'll always be there like an invisible reminder of each time I allowed my soul to be taken, trampled, murdered before my very eyes. Clothes evaporated into the realm on unimportance; there were no more barriers between us.

"Tell me you want me to stop." Her voice echoes off the stained walls before reaching my ears. Lady Heather had advised her to always ask for my permission with each submission but Lady Heather had not taken into account my master's impatience. The glint of silver around my ring finger in the moonlight was the only permission she needed to continue her assault, implied consent.

Blood caught in my throat before I spat out her reward upon the hardwood floor. Stupidly, I found myself saying that I needed to wipe the floors down anyway. "Stop, please, Catherine," My words ring hollow as I give her the response she wants to hear, my opinion is no longer relevant.

Her hands crossed across my throat as she leaned down and licked up the remnants of her masterpiece of pain while her knee pushed possessively upward against my already sopping sex.

I was an instrument of pleasure for her. I was a blank canvas for her to paint all of her fantasies on. Each thrust of muscle and bone against my clit was too much, not enough, just right.

"You don't want me to stop."

Black and white stars flew before my eyes as her efforts increased and her grip on my neck screwed tighter, tighter, tighter. My scream gargled into a muttered groan, my tied hands tensed as this roller-coaster of pain rounded up for its final climb. My master was incoherent as everything focused on giving me release. She loved taking my sense of self away and leaving me empty and giving me the illusion of a return to normalcy. But I was always going to be her cracked sculpture, only she could put me back together again in a functioning manner. I gave her that right. I wanted to steal it back.

Minutes of grateful silence passed. Her unmarked flesh juxtaposed against my oozing wounded skin, each breath of hot air burned my ear and agitated my open scars. She muttered possessively with each thrust, "my brown-eyed whore" and I clutched the flimsy ribbon holding me captive.

But she couldn't give me release yet, not yet. The climb that I thought would end in a final descent of pleasure was another lie; she untied my wrists, rolled me over onto my knees, and proceeded to play her miserable game once more. The bloodied refuse of the arousal covered and red-brown stained sheets stared up at me as I waited for her to continue.

Arbeit macht frei. Arbeit macht frei. Arbeit macht frei.

There is comfort in repetition. I was tired of playing this game of cat and hobbled mouse. I wanted more, I wanted less. Each lash of her whips against my battered flesh released me from her hold over me.

No longer would I stand conflicted. No longer would I let her make decisions for me, no longer would I allow her to take the permission from me that was never granted.

I love her. I love her enough to let her do these things to me…but this has to stop. It can't go any longer.

"Stop, Catherine. I don't want to do this anymore." No inflection in my voice was needed as I turn toward the eyes that enraptured me enough to leave Gil, so many years ago. "I've been letting you take every piece of humanity I have and I don't want to do that anymore. Stop."

I have beheaded the monster. One word was all it took to chop the mighty head off the shoulders of misery that had been overwhelming me for too long. Her eyes softened, legs weakened, shoulders lowered. The whips dropped from her shaking fingers as her eyes finally saw the bloodied mass of my body. Each glance of her slow-moving eyes made the tears that had frozen over, flooding onto my caked in dried blood face. Never had she taken time to see the gashes, the bruises, the barely-healed scars that always reopened to shed more crimson rivers.

I was tired of pain.

With a sigh of exhaustion, Catherine blinked once, twice, three times before she fell into my arms in submission. No longer was I fighting against the impossible, no longer was Catherine taking my soul with nothing in return. There was no need to form words of apology. They were not needed nor requested. Our wedding bands glistened as one and she caressed me into a period of relaxation.

Arbeit macht frei. Work makes you free. The chant slipped from my mind as I held onto Catherine's heaving frame. It was no longer necessary.

Finally, finally I was free.


End file.
